


close your eyes and pretend

by Anonymous



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Anal Sex, Damen is Dead at the start of the story, Face Slapping, Father/Son Incest, Fucked Up Relationships, Grief/Mourning, Hate Sex, Implied/Referenced Incest, Incest, Laurent is fucked up, M/M, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-29
Updated: 2019-03-29
Packaged: 2019-12-26 03:31:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18274895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: How cruel a twist of fate it is, that Laurent should be confronted with his dead lover in the face of his youngest son.(Damen dies and Laurent doesn't cope well. Main sexual content is between Laurent/Nikandros.)





	close your eyes and pretend

**Author's Note:**

> This was sort of indirectly inspired by Josselin's similar story, where Damen 'dies' and Laurent/Nik hook up. This doesn't have the same happy ending, though. Please be aware this isn't a happy story.
> 
> Read the tags and content warnings before you proceed.

It is Nikandros who brings him the news. Nikandros who stands before his throne, fallen to his knees, unable to meet his eyes, and tells him that Damen is dead.

Laurent laughs, at first, because the idea of it is so truly, terribly awful that it is either that or scream. He does that too, later. He shuts himself in their rooms, tearing everything apart until it is less than rubble, and screams himself hoarse. 

He stays there for weeks, alone in the dark. He ignores their kingdom, their newly founded empire built on sand. He ignores his duties and responsibilities, ignores everything that he knows he should, he  _ must  _ do. 

It is pathetic, really. He should be used to such loss by now.

Nikandros makes the arrangements for the funeral. Laurent doesn’t attend. The whole empire is brought to mourning and Laurent doesn’t even show his face. He knows they whisper about it, behind his back. He knows they call him mad, but the words ricochet off him like so many pebbles skimming across the surface of a calm and terrible sea. He is beyond that now. He doesn’t care anymore.

It seems almost cruel, to pretend at life after that. But he is a coward. Even in the deepest depths of his grief, Laurent cannot bring himself to die. 

He sits, often enough, by the foot of their bed and remembers, remembers so perfectly he can almost reach out and touch, the way Damen had looked sleeping there. He remembers how it had felt to curl up beside him, to reach out and touch him whenever the fancy struck. He remembers what it was like to be looked at with the kind of love that could tear empires apart and forge them anew. But even when the tears blind him, even when he clutches the handle of some random blade so tightly his bones creak, telling himself to do it, now, to end this pain because even death would be kinder, he cannot bring himself to do it.

He is a coward and he is alone, and death is too good for him.

He sends their sons to the country, after mourning has ended. People look at him with shock, when they hear the news. They’re so surprised, that a man who has just lost his world would send away the only people left in it that he loves, but then they don’t know Laurent at all. It hurts to look at them, the boys they raised together. So Laurent won’t look at them at all.

He can’t even bring himself to bid them farewell, merely watches their departure from a window on the second floor. He doesn’t even flinch when their youngest calls out for his father, tears streaming down his ruddy cheeks, as his nanny and older brother force him into the carriage that will whisk them far, far away.

When they are out of sight, Laurent is  _ glad. _

Nikandros confronts him, after it is too late. He shoves him back against a wall, and Laurent is so weak, so apathetic, he lets him. He doesn’t even feel the way his head collides with the stone.

“You can’t do this,” Nikandros says. “You can’t push them away. They’re his sons too.”

Laurent wants to kill him. He wants it so viscerally for a moment that all he can see is blood. 

“They’re my children,” Laurent says. “I will send them where I like.”

Nikandros looks so defeated after that, that Laurent wants to laugh. He wants to laugh until his throat is dry and cracked and bleeding and he drowns in it. 

“He wouldn’t want this,” Nikandros says. “He wouldn’t want you to be alone.”

“He’s dead,” Laurent says. He spits the words out. “It doesn’t matter what he wants anymore.”

Nikandros tries to reach out to him, in his own way. He tries admirably, despite his distaste for Laurent, because he thinks it’s what Damen would have wanted. He’s probably right, Laurent thinks. It was worse for him. He knew Damen his whole life. He had to carry the news to Laurent himself. 

Laurent is cruel with him, short with him, finds any excuse to hurt him. He snarls his barbed insults, spits them out like venom, and relishes every flinch he can wring from Nikandros. It is like kicking a wounded animal. It makes a part of Laurent sick, but still he takes pleasure in it all the same, because Laurent has never liked to suffer alone.

Still, Nikandros stays by his side. He attends every meeting where Laurent is little more than a ghost, as his councillors bicker over what to do now. He attends every meal Laurent takes and never touches in his chambers, playing at some kind of pathetic domesticity so tenuous and ridiculous it makes Laurent want to laugh. He comes to Laurent’s chambers every night with his endless bottles of wine and sits with him in his infuriating silence, as though trying to remind him he isn’t alone. 

But Laurent is alone. He is so very, very alone and so very, very angry. 

At first it is with Damen, for having the audacity to leave him like this, when they had been so happy. When Laurent had dared to dream he could have had that life forever. Then, it is with the men he had once called friends, for having the shamelessness to try and move on, like such a thing were possible. Then, it is with anyone and everyone who dares to speak in his presence, dares to offer him their false and empty comforts and condolences, like the pain of having half of himself removed can be mollified by their pitiful  _ sorry’s.  _

At the very least Nikandros doesn’t suffer him that. 

Jord is the first to be sent away. Laurent can’t stand his hovering presence, like a mother fretting over a child. He cannot stand the reminders to eat, sleep, drink. Cannot stand the attempts to get him out of bed, back into the training yard. Cannot stand the observations of how thin and pale he is, how deeply Jord worries. So Laurent sends him away, and feels nothing at the loss.

One by one his princes guard is replaced. Any who knew him during the formative years of his and Damen’s reign, who knew what he looked like when he was truly happy are promoted, dismissed, moved on, replaced with faceless, loyal men who don’t know him. Who don’t care if he wastes away, so long as their wages are paid. 

The only one Laurent keeps is Lazar. Lazar, who lost the other half of himself the same day Laurent lost his, who looks at him in his worst, most pitiful state, and doesn’t say a word. Neither Pallas nor Damen are ever coming home; Lazar knows how it feels. 

Nikandros resists the same, at first. He won’t accept his promotion, and then he finds some excuse to delay. He never says it in so many words, but Laurent knows he simply doesn’t want to leave him in this state. Perhaps he doesn’t trust Laurent not to break the world apart if he takes his eyes off him.

So Laurent draws him in. He sits beside him and feigns conversation. He drinks until he is blind and presses so close he feels sick with it. Nikandros is willing, his protests are token. When Laurent climbs on top of him and licks into his mouth, Nikandros holds his waist and pulls him close like he can’t help himself.

He feels so much like Damen that Laurent can’t stand it. His scent is so warm and familiar, so close to something Laurent is never going to have again that he wants to rail at him, hit him, make him  _ bleed _ . But he closes his eyes and pretends instead, and it’s almost enough. He lets Nikandros fuck him however he pleases, and closes his eyes and thinks of Damen, knowing that Nikandros is doing the same.

It takes three months before Laurent can’t stand it anymore. All it takes, then, is a handful of cruel and precise words and even Nikandros can’t stand the sight of him any longer. 

When he leaves, the last remnant of a better life leaves with him, and Laurent feels a second, more surprising loss, and retreats so deeply into himself that madness is a welcome reprieve.

After three years his children return. The eldest, Theon, is nearing nineteen, and must assume his duties as crown prince. It would be worse than selfish for Laurent to deny him that. Their youngest, who refuses on all accounts to be parted from his brother, as a demanding child of only twelve might, comes along with him.

Laurent watches them arrive, standing on ceremony to greet them. He expects, for an insane moment, as they emerge from the depths of the dark carriage, for Damen to climb out behind them. Imagines they’d simply been away visiting Ios, or perhaps Arles, his two sons and his beloved husband, away for a few months before returning to him, to their home, where they belonged.

But the door closes and there is no Damen.

Laurent bites his tongue, and his mouth is full of blood.

Theon looks like his mother. His hair is light, almost blond, his complexion much more pale than Damen’s had been. He isn’t familiar. He has changed so much since Laurent sent him away that he feels like a stranger and Laurent is  _ glad.  _

The youngest is another matter.

How cruel a twist of fate it is, that Laurent should be confronted with the face of his dead lover in the eyes of his youngest son. How cruel a twist of fate it is that unthinkingly, unknowingly, they had given him his father’s name, as though to taunt Laurent even now. Laurent can’t even stand to think of that name, when he thinks of his son. Not when he looks into those same eyes and he feels like dying all over again.

He is a terrible father. He hates himself for it, more than he is sure his sons will one day resent him. 

Theon doesn’t try to reconnect. He understands quickly, after a week of rejected offers of company, of avoidance, of distant apathy, that he is never going to get either of his father’s back. The boy was always smart. He got that from his mother. He was going to be fine.

The youngest doesn’t catch on so quickly. He is like a puppy, trailing Laurent around, desperate for the scraps of his attention. He is pathetically eager, so warm and open and kind like he doesn’t understand how insulting his happiness is. He calls Laurent father, like it is true. Like he came from Laurent’s loins himself. Like he isn’t the last remnant of a dead man who was the only tie between them.

Theon will be a good king one day, Laurent is assured by his tutors. He is smart and kind and fair, and has a good sense of justice. Like his father, they don’t say, but Laurent hears it all the same. At the encouragement of his council, he takes Theon into more matters of state. He is grateful, to have someone to shoulder the burden with. His passion for stateship died a long time ago.

But though Theon is bright, rather like Auguste was, it is the youngest who is the genius. Laurent can see it in him, the quiet, bookish kind of intelligence that young boys try to hide. It is not the same, to master the word like one might master the sword. Still, when he finds the boy curled up in the library with one of the books Laurent remembers so fondly from his own childhood, something in Laurent shifts. A dead part of himself breathes life anew. He can meet his sons eyes, when they discuss a new story or some ancient history. He can ignore, if only for a handful of minutes, the terrible agony that comes from looking at his face, for long enough to pretend that things could have been so different.

He pictures the life they could have had. Pictures sitting here in this very library, his son curled up on his lap, reading aloud from a book he’d chosen, while Damen sat across from them with that beautiful, warm smile on his face. That is the life they should have had. That is the life Laurent wanted more than anything. 

But the world was so very, very cruel.

Laurent is glad that his sons have each other. Theon looks after the youngest like once Auguste had looked after him, and he can see the love between them. He didn’t think of their own grief, when he had lost Damen. He didn’t care for it then, but he sees now the bond it has forged between them. He is glad they had each other, when Laurent had made himself alone. 

He suspects that the youngest has spent some of his nights in Theon’s rooms, as Laurent had once done in Auguste’s. Nightmares drove him to seek his brother’s comforts all those long years ago, and storms had scared him under the covers, where only Auguste’s promises of protection could calm him down and coax him back out. 

He suspects it, because his bed is where the youngest comes, when Theon is away touring their provinces, during a particularly violent storm.

Laurent is irritated with the guards, for letting the boy in, though he can see why they didn’t have the heart to turn him away. He’s trembling in his nightshirt, whimpering quietly like he doesn’t want anyone to hear, but is too afraid to remain silent, in the way that children sometimes are. 

“What are you doing here?” Laurent asks him, sitting up and setting aside his book.

“Please father,” the youngest whimpers. “I’m scared.”

A crack of lightning and the deep rumble of nearby thunder make the boy jump. He edges forward, like he’s physically restraining himself from launching himself at the bed and at Laurent. 

“Please, can I stay. Please.”

Laurent wants to tell him to go. He’s slept alone in this big, empty bed for so long that it feels… wrong, somehow, to allow another, even his own son, to share it with him. No one else belonged in the space beside him but the man who would never share it again.

But the next bolt of lightning makes the boy cry, and Laurent, even though he had long since thought himself incapable, feels sorry for the pathetic sight of him. In a moment of true weakness, he pulls his sheets aside and nods his head. The boy runs over so quickly he nearly trips over his own feet, launching himself at Laurent and burrowing against his side under the covers so forcefully it knocks Laurent’s breath from him.

“You will be quiet,” Laurent says, voice stern. “And you will go to sleep.”

“Yes father,” is all the boy says. 

Laurent promises himself, as he stares down at the slack face of his sleeping son, looking so much like his father that Laurent can’t breathe, that he will never let this happen again. No matter how much his son rails and cries, Laurent cannot look down at his face, the face that is so completely Damen’s that it is a freak of nature, and bear it. 

He sleeps more restfully than he has in nearly five years, as though the mere presence of someone in bed beside him is all his mind needed to finally find peace. Perhaps that is why, when he wakes in the morning, to the sensation of someone curling against his chest, he forgets, for a moment. He feels a crown of soft, black curls, sees the warmth of nut brown against his own pale skin, hears the rise and fall of rhythmic breath, watches the way the slant of a strong nose more familiar to him than his own catches the soft morning light, and for a moment he is so sure it is Damen that he smiles. 

But when his son shifts, nuzzling against Laurent’s chest, and reveals the youthfulness of his features, the too pretty pout of his bottom lip, Laurent feels the grief again so sharply it is as though it is fresh even now, as though he is standing before Nikandros again as he did five years ago, hearing those words for the very first time.

But that moment before the grief, that single, perfect moment, was everything. The few seconds in which Laurent could pretend was worth the agony that followed. It becomes an addiction. It peels at fresh scars and digs deeper wounds, so deep sometimes Laurent wants to tear into the soft flesh of his sons pretty face, to mar that beauty, if only to spare himself the pain. But it is a balm unlike any other, to look at him and pretend. Laurent doesn’t have the strength to deny it to himself.

Even after Theon’s return, the youngest continues to flee to Laurent’s bed in the night. At first it is the excuse of the storm, then it is nightmares, then it is because he wants Laurent to read to him, and happens to fall asleep before the story is done. The excuses become flimsier and flimsier until they stop altogether, and now Laurent’s son, fifteen years old and well beyond the age of such childishness, sleeps in his bed every night without question. 

Laurent hates himself so much sometimes, he can’t breathe for it. He wonders what Damen would think of him, using their son as an excuse to lie to himself for a handful of minutes every morning, in an effort to keep the memory of him alive. He wonders if Damen would be as disgusted with him as he is with himself, when those soft, lazy moments stir something in him he hasn’t felt in eight years. 

He promises himself it is all imagined.That the boys ardent and blatant affection, the way he nuzzles into Laurent too closely, is purely childish innocence, and nothing more. But he hasn’t forgotten, what it was like to be so young and so alone and offered, for the first time, from the only person that mattered, a scrap of affection.

When his son hits the early stages of his manhood, Laurent can no longer pretend he doesn’t think of it.

The boy moans in his sleep. He rocks against the bedding, staining the front of his nightshirt, and babbles erotic nothing's as his body stirs to arousal and completion in his unconsciousness. The first time it happens, Laurent nearly throws him off the bed. Nearly banishes him from his rooms, nearly sends him to the countryside to while away the rest of his childhood there far from where Laurent could see or touch him. He wants to. He knows he should.

Instead, he is frozen, and caught in perverted rapture as he watches his son come in his sleep.

The next morning Laurent is sick. He cannot meet the boys’ eyes.

The next night, he pulls the covers aside and lets his son crawl back into his bed.

The boy begins to gravitate towards him in sleep, as though subconsciously seeking a body to curl around. It only takes a month before the boy’s body starts to learn and seek more, and recognises Laurent’s form as a more pleasurable object to rut against than the downy bedding.

Laurent bites his lip so hard it bleeds, the first time he feels his son rut against his back. He digs his nails so hard into his palm it splits the skin in eight points of agony. Amidst the nausea, the self-hatred, there is something darker and more sinister than Laurent knows how to acknowledge. So, he does nothing. He lets his son come on his back, and pretends nothing happened at all.

A part of him is convinced the boy is aware, that his actions are deliberate. He’s so needy, so constantly aroused, what normal fifteen year old sought the same stimulation in so shameless a manner? He doesn’t know whether the idea of the boy’s actions being deliberate is worse than the thought of them being incidental. 

It’s a dangerous game, Laurent plays, in the months that follow. And yet it isn’t until the boy comes to him one night in tears, as Laurent sits on his bed signing papers he has barely read, that he’s forced to confront exactly what it is that he has allowed to exist between them.

“Theon said I needed to stop coming here,” the pathetic thing cries. “He says it’s wrong. He says I need to grow up.” The boy sniffs. He hovers, beside the bed, as though uncertain whether he is welcome in it. “I don’t want to, papa.”

The boy hasn’t called him that since he was seven. It is the title Damen took, while Laurent claimed ‘father’. Hearing it makes Laurent’s breath catch. He feels sick, dizzy, even as he sits upright and puts the papers slowly, deliberately, carefully to the side.

Laurent stares at his son. He senses a crossroads, in a distant sort of way. He could send him away. He could use his eldest as an excuse. It would be perfectly normal. He could feign absolute innocence, and this all would fade into a distant, ugly memory, no worse than the uglier memories before it. 

He wonders if that would make him more like his uncle, to push his son away and deny him his attention. Would it be better than the alternative? 

“Your brother doesn’t understand,” Laurent hears himself say, as though through murky water. “It doesn’t concern him.”

The boy’s face lights up. “So I can stay?” He asks. His eagerness is palpable. Laurent’s heart clenches.

_ No.  _ He wants to say. “Yes.”

The boy curls against his chest, as Laurent sits back against the headboard and reads him his favourite story. His body is bigger now than it was when they’d started doing this. He no longer tucks neatly into Laurent’s side as he once had.

He’s not really a boy, any more. 

He looks more like Damen every day.

 

***

 

It is almost seven years to the day since his departure that Nikandros returns.

It is without great fanfare, there will be no grand celebrations to welcome the Kyros to the capital. His warm welcome is in the arms of his nephews, who remember their distant Uncle Nikandros with great fondness. Theon greets him with cordial maturity, stern and proud as a king. The youngest flings himself in Nikandros’ arms, missing, in his eagerness, the pale shock on Nikandros’ face when he sees him.

Laurent nods his greeting. Time and distance have healed the grievances Laurent harboured against Damen’s oldest friend, and in a way, he is glad to see him again.

Nikandros stares. He stares long and hard at Laurent in public when he shouldn’t, and even longer and harder in the privacy of Laurent’s chambers when they are alone.

“You haven’t aged a day,” Nikandros says.

Laurent takes a long sip of very strong wine. “You look like shit.”

Nikandros laughs. The sound makes Laurent wince. “You haven’t changed at all either, I see.”

They fuck. Laurent is the first to close the distance, impatience with Nikandros’ ideas of virtue, climbing onto his lap and biting his lips red and raw. He rides Nikandros so hard it is more pain than pleasure. It’s been so long since he’s done this his body barely remembers it. The memory of the way Damen had felt inside him so long gone he’d forgotten to miss it.

Nikandros comes inside him, his seed leaking out of Laurent’s hole when he softens and slips out. He tries to reach for Laurent, tries to finish him off, but Laurent isn’t interested in his fumbling attentions. He stands, feeling come leaking down his inner thigh, and goes into his chambers.

His son is there, sleeping on his bed. He must have snuck in through the queen’s apartments. 

Laurent locks the door behind him.

 

***

Uncle Nikandros has been in the capital for a week. In that time, he hasn’t been allowed to go to his father’s chambers as often as he used to. He misses the familiarity of that big, soft bed, and the warm affection of his father holding him close. He misses pretending that everything was fine, that they were a happy family again. He feels desperately lonely.

So, despite the fact that his father told him to stay away, he sneaks into the Queen’s Apartments as he had done the night before, and listens at the door to make sure no one is in the bed chamber. 

He doesn’t expect to hear voices coming from within, least of all his Uncle Nikandros’. 

The door is slightly ajar, so he edges it open a little more, enough that he can peak through the gap. He sees his father and Nikandros standing across from each other at the foot of the bed. Nikandros looks angry, he’s gesticulating wildly. His father looks like a statue, utterly unmoving.

“You’re pampering him too much," Nikandros shouts. “You’re turning him soft, have you heard what the people are saying?”

"He's my son, Nikandros," Laurent says. The tone of his father’s voice makes him shiver. "Do not presume to tell me how to raise him."

"I can't believe that," Nikandros says, "Not after what you did when Damen--"

Laurent slaps him before he can finish, so hard Nikandros' head is jerked to the side. 

The boy gasps in shock, stifling himself quickly before the noise can escape. He watches, wide eyed. He's never seen his father hit someone before.

Laurent raises his hand again, clenched into a fist this time, but before he can bring it down on Nikandros' cheek Nikandros' hand darts out and grabs a hold of his wrist. His father’s expression darkens so palpably, the boy nearly shrinks away in fright

"It isn't right, Laurent," Nikandros tells his father. "I've heard.... whispers--"

"How dare you," His father snarls so quietly, so venomously, the boy’s hairs stand on end. "What would you know, you left--"

"You sent me away." Nikandros steps in closer, so close they’re nearly chest to chest. "You sent me away.”

“I didn’t--”

“Don’t lie to me. You knew exactly what you were doing. I might not have realised it at the time, but I see it  _ perfectly  _ now.”

And then, to his shock, Uncle Nikandros' other hand is moving, and he thinks he's going to hit his father, the  _ King _ , and Laurent is going to have him killed. But he doesn’t hit Laurent. Instead, he grasps a hold of Laurent's hair, tugging it back harshly. His father makes a sound, they boy thinks it's in pain, and he wants to barge in and stop this. There is silence, stillness for a handful of moments. The boy can hardly breathe. 

But then, impossibly, Nikandros leans forward and kisses his father _. _

The boy watches in shock as Nikandros lets his father’s hand go, and Laurent uses the freedom to grab a hold of Nikandros' chiton and shove him back into the wall. His father steps in after him, shoving him again, before falling upon him with a kind of ferocity that looks more like an attack than intimacy. The boy doesn't even know if it can be called kissing anymore. It looks painful, not soft and sweet like he's seen the pets and their masters at court, or spied from lovers in their corners. It looks like fighting.

His eyes widen when Nikandros' hands move to the laces at his father’s throat, when he starts undoing them, ripping them out of the eyelets so roughly he can hear the fabric tear. Nikandros shoves the jacket off Laurent's shoulders and, as though in retaliation, Laurent pulls the belt off from around his waist. 

He watches, barely able to breathe, as his father and uncle strip themselves bare. They're both naked, kissing each other like they want to hurt one another, and he can only stare in shocked silence. 

He shouldn't be watching this, he thinks, there's something wrong about this. Still, he can't look away. He watches Nikandros push Laurent down onto the bed, watches as he shoves his legs apart and kneels between them.

He can see his father's penis, it looks so much bigger than his own, so red and hard it looks painful. He has no idea what Nikandros is doing when he starts to bend his head, but then he's taking his father’s penis into his mouth, and the sound Laurent makes makes something in his belly twist.

He bites his lip, watching as Nikandros' head bobs up and down, as his father’s fingers tangle in his uncle’s hair, tugging harshly as he guides Nikandros' head. Every sound his father makes seems to travel right through him, and he can feel his cock hardening. 

He's young, it doesn't take much. He doesn't understand why it's wrong.

Nikandros spits on his fingers, and he shoves his father’s legs open wider and his fingers rub over the hole between his cheeks. The boy has heard of men fucking one another, he's seen pets and their slaves do strange things together in the secluded places meant for intimacy, but the Empire isn’t so risque as Vere used to be, so he has no real idea what Nikandros intends to do before he starts to push his fingers inside.

He's almost shocked that his strong, ruthless, indomitable father is letting another man put him on his back and penetrate him like a woman. He might not know much, but he knows it isn’t right for a king to kneel for his lesser. 

But, then, Nikandros starts driving his fingers inside roughly, and his father makes the most sinful sounds, growling with every thrust, groaning when Nikandros does something with his fingers inside. It shocks the boy, to see it, to hear it. He can see his father's thighs shaking, he watches him drawing his legs up on the bed, spreading them wide. 

His father starts tugging harder on Nikandros' hair, trying to push him down further on his cock, and Nikandros slaps him in retaliation, open palm landing flat on the underside of Laurent's thigh. He thinks this is it, his father surely will punish him now. How  _ dare  _ his uncle be so crass as to slap a king. How  _ dare  _ he touch his father that way. He almost wants to push open the door and pull his uncle off him, punish Nikandros himself, except... his father does nothing. 

In fact, his father falls back against the bed, hand releasing Nikandros' head and, when Nikandros slaps him again, this time further down, on the swell of his ass, his father makes an obscene sound that couldn’t be mistaken for anything other than pleasure.

Despite his shock, he can feel hardness between his thighs. He feels his penis throbbing, harder than it ever has been when he’s touched himself tentatively with his own hand. With every sound his father makes, he feels his hips jerk forward, seeking to thrust against something, anything, to relieve this hot pressure building in his gut. He lets his hand fall down, lets it rest against the tent of his chiton. He isn't touching himself, not yet, he's just letting his hand rest there. That’s alright, isn’t it?

Nikandros' wraps his hands around his father’s thighs and, in a sudden movement, yanks him down the bed. He crouches, lower, bending Laurent's legs back, forcing him to fold in half, and then, quite suddenly, sticks out his tongue and licks a long stripe between his father’s cheeks

It's disgusting, filthy. Isn't it dirty there? But the sight of it, the way Laurent responds to it, the breathy moan he makes, it's... the boy can't help himself now. He cups himself through his nightshirt, hand closing around the hard shaft of his cock and squeezing tight.

"Fuck me," he hears his father say. "You useless, stupid man. Fuck me."

Nikandros slaps him again, so hard the sound of the slap echoes "Like a bitch in heat," Nikandros growls at him. "Are you that hot for it?"

Laurent makes a furious sound. His legs close around Nikandros' neck and he twists, flipping Nikandros onto his back. He drags him up the bed and sits on him, and the boy can see Laurent's hand on his throat.

"I should have you killed," Laurent says, "for speaking to me that way."

"But you love it, don't you," says Nikandros. "You always did."

Laurent slaps him across the face. The boy hears Nikandros chuckle.

Was it supposed to be like this, the boy wondered. He had thought intimacy was a beautiful thing, a gentle thing, for people who loved one another and treated one another sweetly. This isn't sweet, or gentle. 

Laurent spits on his hand and reaches behind himself. Good, the boy thinks, he means to penetrate Nikandros now, to take him as is fitting of a king-- the pleasure of the thought doesn't register as inappropriate in his mind.

But Laurent doesn't reach back further than Nikandros' cock. He cups it, smearing his spit over it, stroking it up and down. Subconsciously, the boy echoes his father's movements with his own hand.

"Do you pretend i'm him," Laurent asks. The tone of his voice is strange, it makes the hair stand on the back on younger son's neck. "Do you like to close your eyes and pretend it's him who you're fucking?"

"Shut up," Nikandros growls.

"But you do, don't you? My hands might not be as rough as his, nor my body as big, but you can pretend all the same."

"Don't, please--"

Laurent chuckles. He bends low, he takes Nikandros' bottom lip into his mouth and bites down hard. The boy almost expects to see blood.

"You were never any match for me, you know that? Damen might have let you into our bed, but you never had his heart." He sits back, running his hands down Nikandros' chest, raised red lines trailing the points of his nails. "That,  _ lover _ , was always mine."

He reaches behind himself again and the boy watches, with awe and horror alike, as Laurent starts to take Nikandros' cock inside him.

If Nikandros had intended to reply to Laurent's taunt, he never manages it. He throws back his head, groaning long and low, his hands flying to Laurent's waist, holding him tight.

The boy watches, rooted to the spot, cock throbbing in his hand, as Laurent seats himself on Nikandros lap, the entirety of Nikandros' cock inside him.

They are still, for a moment. Laurent breathes harshly, head tossed back, low little whimpers dragging from his throat. Uncle Nikandros is still, too, until his hips start to thrust up, little half-aborted movements that he can’t seem to control. 

He is stilled, when Laurent slaps him again. He groans, the sound strangled, when Laurent’s hands wrap around his throat.

The boy watches as his father starts to move, rising up and down on Nikandros’ cock, the length of it disappearing somewhere deep inside him. He bites his lip as he watches, wondering what it must feel like, if it would hurt, or if it would feel good. He almost reaches behind himself, curious enough that he contemplates pressing his fingers at his own hole, but he can’t quite bring himself to do it. Later, he thinks, he will lie on his back on his father’s bed and explore what it’s like to be touched down there. For now, there is little else to think of, but for the sight of his father riding his uncle like a pet.

The boy loses track of time, there is nothing but the slick sounds of Nikandros cock thrusting inside his father’s hole, nothing but the harsh moans of pleasure as they join. The boy doesn’t know how long it has been, when his father leans forward, crouching low over his u uncle’s body, gyrating his hips in a hypnotising motion as he does. The boy can hear the faint sound of whispering, but it is too quiet to make out the words.

He wonders what his father has said, when he leans back and the boy can make out his uncle’s stricken face. Nikandros shake his head, expression tortured, something like rage burning in his eyes. The boy wonders if he’ll push his father away, he’s almost afraid he will, for a moment, and that he will hurt him.

But then, Nikandros face twists, expression of of exctasy, and in a long, low groan, he finishes deep inside Laurent, holding his hips down hard to keep the full length of himself inside. 

The boy doesn’t think his father finishes. He’s almost disappointed, by that. He’s curious as to what expression he might have, if it would be gentler than Nikandros’. If his moans would be sweeter.

When Laurent rolls off of his uncle and onto the bed, Nikandros lies there, dazed, for a long time. He doesn’t speak, doesn’t move, just lies there, breathing rough and deep. Eventually, he turns to Laurent. In a voice the boy has never heard his uncle utter before, he says, “You're a monster."

His father doesn’t look at him. “Yes,” Laurent says. “I suppose I am.”

The boy doesn't know or understand what that means, what his father had said that would make his uncle say a thing like that. He feels indignant; it’s not true, and he wants his uncle to know it. His father is wonderful, loving and kind and so sweet to him. He couldn’t possibly be a monster. It doesn’t see fair.

Nikandros push himself to his feet, after that. He dresses quickly, straightening his clothing and running hands through his hair. He turns to Laurent before he goes. "Whatever you're doing to that boy, stop it," he says. "He might be your son, but he was Damen's too. Respect that much, at least."

The boy watches Nikandros leave. He watches his father, after, lying on his bed in a tired slump for a long time. Eventually Laurent pushes himself up, fetching his undershirt from where Nikandros had flung it to the ground and slipping it over his head. His neck is covered in bites that Nikandros has left on his neck. When he stands, a trail of white leaks down his inner thigh. He doesn't wipe it away.

"You can come in now," Laurent says.

For a second, the boy doesn't realise that Laurent is talking to him. When Laurent turns to the door, however, with a raised eyebrow and crossed arms, the boy meekly pushes open the door, head hanging low and hands half-heartedly trying to hide the bulge in his chiton, and steps into the room. 

Laurent looks him up and down, tops of his thighs barely covered by his nightshirt, and the soft glow of the lantern behind him rendering it practically see through. They boy can see all the marks Nikandros’ hands left on his father’s body. He hates them. 

"How long were you watching?" Laurent asks.

The boy’s eyes guiltily fall to the floor. "From the beginning," he confesses.

Laurent nods stiffly. He goes to his dresser, where he always has a pitcher of wine and pours himself a glass, downing it in one shot. "You must understand, it is... complicated, between your uncle and I."

"Complicated?" The boy frowns, he doesn't understand. The things they had done to each other.... that hadn't seemed complicated. That had been rage, plain and simple.

"We share a history," Laurent says. "We share a past. Things happened between us that are difficult to explain. Your father... Your other father, he was dear to us both."

"I don't understand," the boy says.

Laurent sighs. He turns back to his son and folds him into his arms. He holds him tightly, tight enough that younger son squirms when he feels his erection press into Laurent's stomach.

"You will when you're older," Laurent says.

"Papa..."

"Hush," Laurent says. "No more questions. It's time to sleep."

The boy expects to be turned away, but instead Laurent draws him over to the bed and lies down. The boy meekly climbs into bed beside him.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Welp.


End file.
